Art student Danielle Pecora from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn designed this ball to help children learn how to read Braille:

Looking a bit like a stiff Koosh ball, it has 26 magnetic pegs, each depicting a letter of the alphabet in Latin on one side and Braille on the other. The object's to fit the pegs into 26 circular indents in the ball that are themselves embossed in Braille letters. "A" in Braille, for instance, is a single dot, so you'd find the peg with one dot, then match it to the spot on the ball with one dot. An electronic device in the ball chimes when you get a letter right. It'll also verbalize what letter you're touching when you run your fingers over the indents.

Link | Photo: Pratt Institute

Tim Vinke made this portable office, which he calls "Kruikantoor". It's carved out of EPS foam and has two chairs, a light, a desk, storage space, and an electrical hook-up. It has wheels so workers can move it wherever it's needed. At the link, you can see photos of how it disassembles.

Link via Geekologie | Photo: Design Boom | Previously: Pop-Up Cardboard Office

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Why was Lassie made with a dog rather than a cat? Because Timmy would have died in the first episode otherwise.

This is allegedly a sketch from a short-lived comedy show called The Downer Channel.

via Nerdcore

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Air-Hair, developed by the Tokyo Institute of Technology, is a virtual reality haircut simulator. The user trims hair that s/he can only see on a screen. A motor in the pair of scissors creates resistance when the barber slices into hair and the screen shows hair falling away as the barber progresses. You can view another video at the link.

via CrunchGear

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Researchers at Harvard are trying to create programmable matter -- meaning matter than can take any shape on command. At this very early stage of development, they've come up with a flat sheet of material that can fold into different forms:

Based on the ancient art of origami, the sheets are edged by foil actuators--thin, solid-state motors--that contract or expand when they receive an electric current from flexible electronic circuits embedded in the sheets. After they achieve their preprogrammed shape, the sheets are held in place by tiny magnets on the edges of the fold joints.

Link via Make

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This cute video shows that there's a lot more inside a birdhouse than is evident from the outside. It's a commercial for squash juice. Squash juice? Yes. Apparently some people drink squash juice.

via The Presurfer

Chakras are centers of energy and consciousness within the human body according to various Hindu traditions. There are six basic, physical chakras as well as a higher, spiritual one. This chair, designed by Karim Rashid, is made to accommodate those pressure points.

http://dailyfix.interiordesign.net/products/1154/karim-water-jet-cutting-ceramic-wood-what-i-saw-on-neocons-7th-floor via OhGizmo!

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Yes, it's real! This surreal fusion of country line dancing and hip hop from 1995 was created by aerobics instructor Diane Horner. She says "You can even add your shoulders if you want. That's the fun thing about hip hop dancing."

via Glenn Reynolds

IN HONOR OF BILLY MAYS, WHO DIED ONE YEAR AGO TODAY, WRITE IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS LIKE A FIRST-TIME INTERNET USER. THUS DECLARES BUZZFEED:

WE SHALL BE A LIVING MEMORY OF HIS BOOMING VOICE, ECHOING THROUGHOUT TIME AND OUR INFOMERCIAL RERUNS.

SO LET IT BE DONE.

LINK VIA ACE OF SPADES HQ | IMAGE: SCRAPETV

BUT THAT'S NOT ALL! SEE ALSO: 5 STRANGEST PRODUCTS PITCHED BY BILLY MAYS

Christiaan Van Vuuren became a viral video star when he produced a rap video while under quarantine for drug-resistant tuberculosis. His quarantine lasted longer than he expected, so he produced a second video. Thankfully, Van Vuuren is now home from the hospital after living there in isolation for six months:

His spoof clips and comedic raps about his time in hospital - about 13 of them have been posted to YouTube - have been viewed nearly 1.5 million times and van Vuuren's online celebrity even got him a regular gig on prime time national news in New Zealand, rapping the news of the day.

Asked how he felt about his imminent departure from hospital, van Vuuren said he was "buzzing". His clear test results only came back on Friday.

"I'm just pumped to get home and sleep in my own bed, breathe fresh air and enjoy some of the sunlight ... I'm just excited to get back into life in the real world again," he said in a phone interview.

Link | Photo: Stuff.co.nz

An ambigram is a word that can be read from a different orientation. Typographer John Langdon designed this tattoo that says "art & science" from one direction and "philosophy" upside-down.

via Geekologie | Artist's Website | Photo: OddStuff | Previously: Neatorama Ambigram

Here at Neatorama, we've previously written about a few inventive campaigns by the Dutch advertising company DDB. That firm once turned a subway stairwell into a piano, used zombies to promote cholesterol awareness, and made gorilla attack-proof glasses. One of their more recent efforts touted the effectiveness of a certain line of refrigerators by suggesting that they could preserve meat as old as the dinosaurs.

Link via Super Punch | Company Website | Photo: DDB/Szymon Plewa

In the 60s and 70s, various recreational vehicle manufacturers mounted small motorhomes on the Volkswagen Beetle chassis. It was called the "Bugaroo" or "Beetle Minihome":

The MiniHome is a tour de force of ergonomic design and space-saving ingenuity, if one can get past the stereotypical 70s Harvest Gold & Avocado Green interior color scheme – the decor is up to the buyer, at least. At 125 inches long, 79 inches wide and 73.25 inches high, the camper offers copious living space that includes a full-size bed in the cabover section. Other VW RV amenities include a slide-out butane stove and stainless steel sink (above), a 50-lb icebox and a closet.

Web Urbanist has a large gallery of pictures and links to technical information about these unusual RVs.

Link via DudeCraft | Photo: Fred W. Truman

Researchers at Ben-Gurion University in Israel developed a computer program that they think can detect depression among bloggers. To test their hypothesis, they scanned 300,000 English-language blogs and had clinical psychologists read the subjects that the computer indicated were depressed. The psychologists agreed with the computer 78% of the time:

"The software program was designed to find depressive content hidden in language that did not mention the obvious terms like "depression" or suicide," explains Prof. Neuman. "A psychologist knows how to spot various emotional states through intuition. Here, we have a program that does this methodically through the innovative use of 'web intelligence.'"

For example, the program spots words that express various emotions, like colors that the writer employs to metaphorically describe certain situations. Words like "black" combined with other terms that describe symptoms of depression, such as sleep deprivation or loneliness, will be recognized by the software as "depressive" texts.

Link via Digg | Photo: CDC

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A mandala is a geometric design with special spiritual connotations in various Buddhist and Hindu traditions. The creation of sand paintings in the form of mandalas is a high art among Tibetan Buddhists. In the above time-lapse video, you can watch monks compose one over six days at Emory University:

Sand mandalas have been in practice for thousands of years, according to Tsepak Rigzin, assistant program director for Drepung Loseling and an adjunct Tibetan language instructor at Emory. Monks use a grated metal rod and a traditional metal funnel called a chak-pur to carefully place millions of grains of colored sand on a table.[...]

There are hundreds of colorful mandala designs to choose from, Rigzin said, but they all share a basic format of geometric shapes and spiritual symbols.

“Normally the monks who do this, they have to go through a lot of training programs and they have to be authenticated by their masters,” Rigzin said. “They have to memorize the oral texts and learn the ritual.”

Following their traditions, the monks wiped away the sand painting within an hour of its completion.

Link via DudeCraft | Previously: Mandala Sand Paintings